While we are still battling issues with the Intel Linux
graphics driver in getting that running properly with Intel's new Sandy
Bridge CPUs (at least Intel's Jesse Barnes is now able to reproduce the
most serious problem we've been facing, but we'll save the new graphics
information for another article), the CPU performance continues to be
very compelling. Two weeks ago we published the Intel Core i5 2500K
Linux benchmarks that showed just how well this quad-core CPU that costs
a little more than $200 USD is able to truly outperform previous
generations of Intel hardware. That was just with running the standard
open-source benchmarks and other Linux software, which has not been
optimized for Intel's latest micro-architecture. Version 4.6 of the GNU
Compiler Collection (GCC) though is gearing up for release and it will
bring support for the AVX extensions. In this article, we are
benchmarking GCC 4.6 on a Sandy Bridge system to see what benefits there
are to enabling the Core i7 AVX optimizations."